Baker County District Attorney Greg Baxter understands teenagers can be prone to pranks.

But he doesn’t show even the slightest smile while talking about kids who threaten, even in jest, about shooting or bombing a school.

“Saying it’s a joke is not a defense,” Baxter said.

In the wake of a May 9 incident in which a Baker High School student was suspended, and cited for disorderly conduct, for a social media post that included a threat about a school shooting, Baxter and Baker City Police Chief Ty Duby have been discussing how to handle similar situations.

Baxter lauds the response of Baker City Police, including the department’s school resource officer, Jonathan Parsons, to the May 9 situation.

But Baxter said he believes that any student who makes such a threat, and if there is definitive evidence, as was the case May 9, should not only be cited but should also be taken to the juvenile detention facility in The Dalles.

The BHS student cited May 9 was not detained there.

“The climate we’re in, we want to take every one of these seriously,” Baxter said. “That’s the standard I want to have.”

Duby agreed.

In a statement after the May 9 incident, he said: “The message needs to be that in this time of school shootings and violence, kids need to be aware that even ‘jokes’ about school shootings will generate a response from law enforcement and be thoroughly investigated.”

Duby said police determined that the May 9 social media post was “pretty much a bad choice in pranks” and that there was “no actual intent” to commit a violent crime.

The prevalence of social media sites has given students, and others, many more potential venues for making threats, including those that are intended as pranks, Baxter said.

Duby pointed out that people can be equally culpable even if they don’t write the threat but forward or otherwise distribute the message.

Duby said he believes social media companies have algorithms that identify certain words or phrases as potential threats, and then alert law enforcement.

The FBI learned about the post that led to the May 9 citation and suspension, and then notified Baker City Police, Duby said.

Baxter compares nonserious threats to the classic exception to First Amendment protection — “shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater.”

That was the analogy Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. used in a free speech case in 1919. Holmes’ point is that not all speech is constitutionally protected, including, as with the theater analogy, speech that is intended to, or is likely to, induce panic.

Oregon Revised Statute 166.023, which defines first-degree disorderly conduct, contains similar language.

The statute reads, in part: “A person commits the crime of disorderly conduct in the first degree if, with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or knowingly creating a risk thereof, the person initiates or circulates a report, knowing it to be false, concerning an alleged hazardous substance or an alleged or impending fire, explosion, catastrophe or other emergency” that is “located in or upon a court facility or a public building” such as a school.

First-degree disorderly conduct is a Class A misdemeanor unless the person has previously been convicted of the same crime, in which case subsequent charges are Class C felonies.

Baxter said his ultimate goal is deterrence — he hopes to convince people to consider their words carefully and to understand that all threats, even those lacking actual intent to carry them out, will be treated equally.

He plans to visit schools this fall to talk to students about what he called a “zero-tolerance” policy.